Recent Posts
Slowcasting
The thing with making any podcast that involves recorded conversations is that people have to be at the same time and place. . The same things that the internet was supposed to make irrelevant in the first place. Well, other than providing cat pictures and porn. So here is an ...
Retro-futurist hallucinations from 2049
Went to Bladerunner 2049 last night. And no, there won't be spoilers in this post. Or more precisely, I am writing about things not in this sequel rather than about the things it contains. Because for all the loving care taken to it, if not the palpable fear of doing ...
Half-baked ideas: privacy friendly and sustainable URL shorteners
URL shorteners are a pest for the web. Not only because the accelerate link rot by adding just another way how hyperlinks can become outdated, but because their business model is mostly based on tracking users. And even worse, they do not so much track users who publish them, but ...
The problem with CAPTCHAs, and an idea for a solution.
One growing annoyance on the web is the use of CAPTCHAs. Yes, that is the weird acronym we use for those questions you get when websites want to make sure you are not a spambot. When you have to enter a text that is displayed in a horribly distorted way.
Why Snowden is no Agee and why it is authoritarian thinking to compare the two
The blog War on the Rocks (of which I had never heard before, but who needs serendipity when you follow eccentrics on Twitter) recently ran a piece by Mark Stout arguing that if Edward Snowden should get clemency, so should Philip Agee. It does so by drawing a bunch of ...
Walter’s (slightly) drunken theory on political ideology
Vinay Gupta is to blame for this post. Anyway, for quite a while I've harbored a slightly drunken theory about political ideology. Meaning that your political ideology might very well reflect your inner demons or greatest strengths. Or both for that matter. It is one of those thoughts that makes ...
Peak resource and things that won’t necesarily change, nr. 1: global supply chains
Old trends often come back in a different form. A current trend is a feeling that we are running out of resources in the way the Club of Rome predicted in its famous 'Limits to Growth' report from 1972, the year I was born. That this particular theme has been ...
Dear e-reader designers and producers…
When I buy an e-reader, I like... simplicity; versatility in file formats; being able to use the damn thing while it is tethered to a computer for the purpose of charging its battery; it to respect any directory structure I have put on any media I may insert into it. Because I do not like... being ...
Hackerspace incorporation patterns
As a mere participant of Revelation Space, a hackerspace (or makerspace, if you will) in The Hague, who also happens to practice law (but not corporate law), I found this article on hackerspaces.org interesting. Interesting but incomplete. Incomplete because it doesn't really explore perfectly reasonable combinations of the patterns described. ...
Happy Tree Friends as Copyright War Fodder
Google published a Happy Tree Friends animation this week that apparantly aims to educate the unwashed heathens of the internet about copyright. For those who are too lazy to click the preceding link: the Happy Tree Friends are a bunch of lovely if not a bit moronic woodland creatures that ...